When there is a chance for me to be resbonsible for a problem i always try to find out if i realy am. In the meanwhile i try not to do what i think have created the problem.

We might created global warming and till we find out we have to stop poluting. Its too selfish to say that we r not responsible for climate change so lets go on and polute the shit out of earth. Like that fellow mentioned above, a cleaner planet want do any bad.

Over the past half-century we have become used to planetary scares of one kind or another. In the 1960s scientists warned that the population explosion would lead to mass global starvation. In the '70s scientists warned that the planet was running out of natural resources -- and when the planet's temperature, which had been rising for hundreds of years appeared to be falling again, scientists warned of a "New Ice Age."

The elephant in the room is population growth and deforestation. No one on any side mentions those. Yeah sure stop burning coal is great but you gotta look at the first 2 or you're wasting your time. Problem is, no one wants to talk/act about them.

The elephants in the room are the New York Times closing its environment desk, and the positions of environment editor & deputy environment editor are being eliminated. ... oh, and that Algore just got his big payout and signed his non-aggression pact with Big Oil.

I'm not concerned about Earth. Those volcanic explosions, meteor impacts, and other abuses caused species extinction, and we are a species. I'm concerned that we possess the ability to end HUMAN life on this planet. Earth will go on, but we might not. That's an issue for me.

The lethality and mutations of H5N1 bird flu make it a more serious threat. (The Spanish flu of 1918 killed tens of millions of people). The possibility of a naturally occurring global outbreak is ever present, —but the threat from labs is becoming more frightening. The cost of synthesizing a new organism goes down every year.

It fits perfectly! ... the northern hemisphere is warming, as it has for millions of years, —except during ice ages.

The Religion of Climate: "The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change, comparable to Nazism faced by Churchill in the 20th century and slavery faced by Lincoln in the 19th century." --James Hansen, Apostle for global warmists at the NASA Goddard Institute

This is a misunderstanding! What we have seen in August and Sept. 2012 was a minimum artic ice extent during the 34 years of satellite supported observations. However, in Oct. 2012 we have seen an unprecedented growth-rate of the arctic ice.http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php (did you hear or read anything of that in the media?)
There is an overwhelming number of peer reviewed papers, at least 7 of them published since 2011, that acknowledge the existence of various eras after the end of the latest ice age (about 12000 years ago), which were warmer than or at least as warm as the present age (in spite of the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2-levels at those times).
Even during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings did cropping and animal husbandry in Greenland, there were similar or even hotter temperatures than today. Retreating glaciers in Greenland are continuously liberating tools made and boreholes drilled by the Vikings.
Having said this it appears very suspicious that in its Third Assessment Report (TAR) the IPCC prominently exposed an iconic graph (later called Mann’s Hockey-Stick), in which the temperatures of pre-industrial warm and cold periods, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, had been virtually leveled out, just to show a dramatic temperature increase in the twentieth century. This IPCC-graph has been object for severe critics of representing scientific bias (never credibly refuted).
The case of CO2-induced global warming is going to face an ever harder time in near future.

There are so many misconceptions here that I don't know where to begin. I'll start with the idea that winter is colder than summer, especially in the arctic (since there is no sunlight in winter and constant sunlight in summer). The amount of sea ice declines in summer to a yearly minimum that happens in late September or early October, and then increases over the course of the winter. The point is that the arctic isn't going to be ice free for the whole year, just in summer. There is strong evidence that this has not happened in the lifetime of humanity, though it has certainly happened before on Earth. That should alarm you: humanity was not evolved to handle previous Earth climates, so this is a sign that the climate of Earth is substantially changing, and humans will have to adapt at a high cost to that change. As it stands, people who pollute do not pay the true cost of their pollution which I, as a Friedmanite, object to.

The consequences of an ice-free arctic are a much more rapid warming of the climate, since energy is no longer lost in the "latent heating" of ice when it is being melted to water. The oceans are free to rise above zero degrees Celsius when there is no ice in the arctic, and will cause land ice in Greenland, Russia, and Canada to melt alarmingly fast. No one is sure how quickly the sea level rises, because the water from melting permafrost doesn't go directly to the oceans. However, it is certain that it will eventually cause significant sea level rise that will destroy coastal habitations of humans. Moreover, this effect cannot possibly be reversed faster than a timescale of several millenia.

If you do not take the time to understand the scientific claims being made, you will never convince anyone of your standpoint. I want to stress that I was once a global warming skeptic. Being a scientist, however, I took my time to investigate the evidence (not the political spin) and found that there is really no other conclusion to draw. Earth is warming at a rate that could be disastrous for our species and contrarians are arguing simultaneously that it is not happening and that we shouldn't pay anyone to find out if it is. It's ridiculous. We are discussing the future of humankind and you can't get over your baseless conspiracy theories.

The argument is over the extent that human activity has contributed to the process, and liberals - true to form - always side against mankind.

They tried to grab power with stories of pollution-generated global cooling in the '70s. It didn't fly. Now they're trying pollution-generated global warming now.

That the "theory of global warming" is so fashionable these days seems to lie not so much in its predictive value (which has yet to be demonstrated) but seems rather to have more to do with snob appeal.

I am sorry Sir, but me too; I am a (now retired) scientist. Up to 6 years ago I had a fairly indifferent position to the claims of human induced global warming. Since then, however, I took the time of two hours a day (as a minimum average) to get an objective view of this matter and to keep me informed on the development.

If you read your comment carefully again you will have to admit that it does not provide a single proof for the alarmist potential future climate scenarios you are painting. Here some additional comments:
1) Sea level has been dramatically rising after the end of the last ice age. During the past 5000 years’ sea level rise slowed down progressively. During the last decade no acceleration was observed.
2) You are totally right: Humanity was not evolved to handle the Earth climate. There is no realistic way of adjusting the climate to any desired average temperature value, but there are plenty of possibilities to adapt to climatic extremes. Humans are adapting to climate and its natural variability very successfully since the beginning of their existence. The term “adaptation to climate change” sounds modern, it is however an ancient practice and a daily concern of all people who live with, in and from nature (or in high risk areas), particularly farmers who have been adapting to climatic hazards ever since 10.000 years.
3) You mean CO2-emssions when you speak of pollution. Why should people pay for emitting the most essential nutrient of all life? All organic matter consists of almost 50% of Carbon. The only carbon source for life is CO2 through photosynthesis. The world is getting greener due to human induced CO2 fertilization: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732337450457821762159367950... . And if you fear dangerous warming caused by CO2 emitting human activity, evidence is progressively dwindling. Even the IPCC admits in the draft of its assessment report AR5 leaked to the public that there was no warming observed during the past 15 years in spite of an increase of CO2-emissions by a third. Not a single model adopted in the previous IPCC reports predicted this reality: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/18/chilling-climate-change-...
4) You try to blame me of conspiracy theories. That’s not correct, but yes, I know the scientific community fairly well. Scientists are human beings with all their temptations. They should be independent but they existentially depend on funding. If you want to survive as a scientist you have to adapt to the political mainstream. I can show you papers in which the outcome has been distortingly interpreted or data have been cherry picked just to keep up with the mainstream and with the expectations of those who provide the guidelines for further research funding. A number of extremely well financed institutions were created whose only “raison d’être” is to provide “evidence” of human induced climate change, such as the IPCC and the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research PIK in Germany. Do you seriously believe, any member of these institutions will show to be dispensable and needless? Science never has been a matter of democratic consensuses. It was driven by individual geniuses and not by mass hysteria.
Being a father of 5 children and hopefully soon of a number of grandchildren, I am looking very optimistic into the future. Future generations will handle their challenges as well as previous ones did. No need, whatsoever, for believing Malthus or Club of Rome and consorts!

The Malthusian example is apropos, and it is indeed possible that technological changes will allow us to reverse the major damage we have done to Earth's ecosystem. That damage is hardly limited to CO2, though it is the most important factor for the purposes of climate modelling.

I have just read an interesting review of a book by James Lovelock (of Gaia fame) that discusses the extent of our current situation in clear terms. To quote,

"There is no doubt that mankind is taking over the reins of global geochemical balance. Industrial production of fixed nitrogen for fertilizer now matches the natural rate of nitrogen fixation on the planet. Rates of fossil-fuel CO2 emission dwarf the natural rate of CO2 release in volcanic gases." [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/james-lovelocks-gloomy-vision/]

That should scare you. Humanity is in no way clever enough to handle the "reins of global geochemical balance", and yet our impact far exceeds that of every volcano on the planet. It surprises me how little that seems to scare so many other people given that not even contrarians are debating this point.

What should further scare you is that you are not producing references from people with real expertise in climate science. The sole reference you provided was to the Wall Street Journal, which is not a source I trust when it comes to accurate depictions of current scientific understanding. I realized this when I first struggled with the issue of climate change, so I started reading all I could find from peer-reviewed scientific journals. This led me to read the IPCC reports, which I consider to be thoroughly convincing documents that are surprisingly readable for a person who does not have climate science training. The case for anthropogenic global warming is clearly stated, and includes detailed discussion on a variety of independent methodologies that all support the conclusion that we have caused a rapid change in climate by burning fossil fuels during and after the industrial revolution.

Now you and others claim that these scientific sources are biased. I think this is a basic misunderstanding of science. Of course everything you read is biased! The Economist is biased, the government is biased, the scientists are biased, all in favour of improving their economic situation in life. The point of being scientific, or indeed sceptical, is that you need to be able to read these documents and derive information from them in spite of their bias. Yes, IPCC and others get paid by governments and attempt to make arguments for their continued existence as organizations. That doesn't prevent them from producing well-reasoned and well-researched pieces of science that leads them to conclude that something unprecedented is happening and it may have disastrous consequences on the human population on Earth.

I don't know what to do about it, but I sure as hell don't think we should be ignoring a potential threat to the continued existence of our species. The mildest scenarios show potentially trillions of dollars of economic damage including the total destruction of several highly populated countries within the next few centuries -- and those are the MILDEST scenarios. I honestly don't see how any scientist that has examined the evidence can possibly disagree with the points that I am making.

The IPCC predicted the heat wave of last summer, the increased number of heat waves in Europe, and the melting of the Arctic. The only way you can claim that the predictive value of these models hasn't been demonstrated is by ignoring evidence. Here's some:

In an ideal world, "scientific" findings would not be politicized. But climate "science" has already been so corrupted by subterfuge that it's going to take a long time before 'observations' and 'predictions' that you cite of AGW are considered credible.

No one has forgotten when scientists at the University of East Anglia admitted throwing away much of the temperature data on which their predictions of AGW are based. I think it was Roger Pielke at Colorado University who discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. But the CRU basically said, 'Trust us.'

In any event the practical result is that scientists for AGW demand that every country in the world fashion its energy policies on the basis of their alleged findings. That's a non-starter.

Citation: "I honestly don't see how any scientist that has examined the evidence can possibly disagree with the points that I am making." This is a statement Malthus could have said, and still Malthus was rebutted manifold by the future of his time (now history).

Imagine the world around 1900. It was already fairly developed but there was no way of foreseeing technologies such as television, nuclear power, information technology, air traffic, space science related technologies, high resolution micro-analysis, pharmaceutical, medical and pesticide progress. Read Julian L. Simon and you will agree that humanity has always been in progress (with some temporarily limited setbacks of course). There hasn’t been an era in history of mankind when humanity had that much liberty, mobility, and enjoyed such a long life expectancy, health care, legal security, food abundance and availability of resources and so on as nowadays.

By the way, as a critical scientist I cannot understand the positive picture you are painting of the IPCC-reports: The Summaries of Policy Makers clearly make very selective and biased use of the information available (partly documented in the technical sections). In the AR4-IPCC report 16 variables are identified as forcing agents of global warming / climate change to be used in its models. The level of understanding for 11 of them was specified by the IPCC ‘very low to low’ (Table 2.11 in IPCC 2007). Yet the IPCC comes up with a 90 to 99 % certainty in the results of its models, - a conclusion which is logically irreproducible and scientifically inacceptable. As mentioned in an earlier comment, I acknowledge that in the AR5 the IPCC seems to realize that their models did not work. But as experience has shown with previous reports we still do not know, what type of IPCC censorship is going to be applied, once the principal authors have done their job. I recommend you to read Donna Laframboise’s book exposing the IPCC as “The delinquent teenager who was mistaken for the world’s top climate expert”.

I fully agree to your comment. Looking to the "Energiewende" in Germany, - a disaster! For my little apartment in the Black Forest I pay four times the electricity tariff (with a strong tendency upwards) as I do for my home in Paraguay. There are 800.000 households in rich Germany unable to pay their electricity bills. For the sake of trying to avoid (beneficial) CO2-emisions the electricity supply in Germany has become an very bureaucratic, state directed economy with guaranteed prices for the extremely volatile Eolic and Photovoltaic sources (independent of whether the energy can be used or not at the moment of delivery) at the cost of a high risk for the grid stability and with the consequence of steadily rising electricity prices. That’s the reality of “green economy” whose core is a fictitious and ideologized climate policy!

If all AGW research was based on research at the University of East Anglia, you might have a point. As it stands, you can download corresponding data yourself from NASA.gov and perform your own analysis if you don't trust it. Given that all these data are available for free online to you and anyone else who is interested, I have a difficult time seeing the logic behind the subterfuge claim.

I think you'll agree that empirical models can agree with reality despite being poorly understood. The confidence ranges quoted by the IPCC are, as I understand it, based on using these models to retrodict past climate measurements. In this sense, the models work perfectly well. Take, for example, Jim Hansen's prediction in 1988 of the climate for the following several decades (discussed here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-proje...). You will find that his "Scenario B", the one he considered most reasonable at the time, fits the observed data remarkably well (there's some sort of small oscillation on top of his predicted curve, and that's it). This quality of model is in no way unique: scientists do not accept bogus claims easily, and all accepted models similarly demonstrate an agreement with experiment. In what sense can you therefore claim that the models aren't working? They are clearly capable of predicting the global temperature of Earth, and do not if the influence of human activity is removed. To say otherwise is, as I have maintained at several points in my comments to this article, to ignore a great deal of credible evidence.

As to Malthus being wrong, well, he wasn't. He simply didn't anticipate the revolution in agricultural technology, which is not something that should ever be taken for granted. Some climate change scenarios allow for the possibility of radical changes to technology and discuss the long term effects (which still lead to centuries of abnormal climate). However, there is only recent indication of research efforts in this direction. I am optimistic, but not so optimistic that I think it's worth denying the scope of the problem and the credibility of the evidence that exists.

Finally, I object to your characterization of the state of science in 1900. There was plenty of indication of the possibility of information technology, since the field was invented by Charles Babbage in the middle of the 19th century. Moreover, the germ theory of disease existed well before 1900, so it was quite reasonable to expect that humanity might use this knowledge to prevent or manage disease of both plants and animals. The concept behind pesticide is as old as civilization: there are plenty of famous examples of people being killed by poison, and that's what pesticide is.

Science is the study of what is possible, not necessarily of what can be achieved by current technology. When climate scientists discuss the climate, they discuss possible improvements in future technology. Their fundamental point is that a great deal of technical progress must be made before we can prevent disaster, which is, in my mind, precisely Malthus' point.

I reiterate that I do not subscribe to any currently proposed solutions to the problem. I believe the answer lies with private enterprise, not with government intervention. I do not believe, however, in the conspiracy theories surrounding global warming. I have examined the evidence and am uninterested in the character of the people who produce that evidence. I have found no evidence behind the contrarian's claims, and their main argument style seems to be the ad hominem. I still fail to see evidence for your claims that the science is not settled -- you are giving me references to books written by people whose expertise is not science of any kind (Donna Laframboise is a journalist and Julian Simon was a professor of Business Administration before joining the Cato Institute, so I cannot consider either an authority of the quality of IPCC science, whatever their abilities may be in character assassination). When I am forming my opinions, I am reading the scientific claims and checking to see that the data are indeed available publicly. Moreover, I notice that skeptics such as Richard Muller become convinced of the validity of the results when they perform their own independent statistical analysis of publicly available data. I therefore stand by my point of view: how is it possible that a critically thinking scientist that has examined the evidence (and is disregarding character assassinations of any kind) can maintain the opinion you hold?

NASA? ... The federal government is the chief proponent of anthropogenic global warming. James Hansen at NASA-Goddard is its apostle and high priest. NASA's AGW funding is supported by the federal government who writes all the paychecks.

In any event, information the federal government makes available is only the information they want the public to see. They are as dug-in as the Univ of East Anglia and other ivory towers who push a very important political bias. Government functionaries would give the same answer as the CRU, 'Trust us.'

The Government's first move regarding AGW is to tax it thereby losing all credence in the eyes of the public.

Any reductions puny mankind might make are reversed by just one of many volcanic eruptions that occur around the globe: Mount Pinatubo; Mount St. Helens, et al.

So this is that "conspiracy theory" stuff I don't buy into. I have never seen any evidence that government is capable of keeping anything important secret -- witness the situation of Bradley Manning, where a person with low-level security clearance was able to implement the largest breach of government security in history. Now you're saying that the same bunch of buffoons is capable of perpetrating a hoax on this scale? Puh-leeze.

If you pay attention to the facts, rather than statements retrieved directly from your anus, you will find that human contributions to CO2 dwarf those of volcanoes -- even when one erupts.

Mr-punk, Bradley Manning was not working for the government, he was using subterfuge on the inside —against the government —when he committed espionage.

But you want to talk about hoaxes? --I remember (most have forgotten) when the IPCC, the UN climate scientific body, wrongly claimed the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. This was found to be entirely unfounded! ... This public relations disaster for the IPCC could have been solved and credibility restored by firing Rajenda Pachauri its chairman.

All AGW agencies lack a policy on conflict of interest which is one reason why their work will always be suspect.

I didn't want to go on with this discussion but some of your latest arguments are so fundamentally wrong that I cannot but picking up at least three of them:
1) In matters of Hansen’s 1988 temperature prediction I cannot follow your arguments! Hansen’s Scenario C (not B as you claim!) parallels more or less the observed temperature (no increase in the past 15 years as even the IPCC admits in its AR5 draft), but contrary to Hansen’s assumption for scenario C, yearly GHG-emissions weren’t constant since 2000, but increased instead considerably (by around 25%). So obviously, there is something fundamentally wrong with Hansen’s models.
2) Even non-scientists can check the conformity of declarations or predictions with reality. No need to understand all the theory behind complex matters. Nobody rebutted Donna Laframboise’ finding that, contrary to its internal regulations, up to 30% of the references used by the IPCC was not peer reviewed. Nobody rejected her observation of a strong connection between IPCC officials and the environmental movement.
3) The picture you try to paint that all “real scientists” are “warmists” is totally wrong. There are many atmospheric physicists, climatologists (or experts in similar fields) who do not share the view of a dangerous anthropogenic global warming going on: Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Happer, Singer, Ball, Kramm, Carter, Plimer, Luedecke, Giaever, just to name a few. I can give you a list of 1000 peer reviewed papers critical to central issues of the anthropogenic global warming theory. Ad-hominem attacks are common practice of the AGW-community as soon as they run out of arguments. Looking to the billions of dollars spent in favor of a prescribed global warming science, the amounts eventually ever spent by the petroleum industry to finance the opposite party has been totally ridiculous…
I am sorry, but I cannot understand how a critical thinking scientist who has no hidden interests can practice so much reality avoidance, as you seem to do.

So we come to it. The two of us can look at the same data and draw radically different conclusions. I maintain that I was discussing Hansen's Scenario B, and my link makes it clear that the only possible way to dispute this claim is to distrust every source of scientific information on our planet. And you call *ME* the one with hidden interests.
Readers, I hope you are paying attention. This is the quality of debate that exists about climate science today: conspiracy theorists and everyone else.

Follow up, because I want to be clear about my own position:
To understand the Hansen result of 1988 (Edit: Link: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-proje...), the trick is to understand the concept of "effective forcing", which is a measure of how much energy is retained by the Earth from the sun. The rise in forcing means that the Earth is heating up (otherwise the graph would be flat) and the trend is based on different models of Earth dynamics.
Hansen's Scenario B, which I maintain is the best fit of the three Scenarios shown, assumes that the actual forcing is growing linearly (that is, increasing at a constant rate). The data seems to exhibit a slightly less than linear growth (the rate of increase is slowing slightly, but the forcing itself is still increasing. Scenario C refers to an obviously ridiculous scenario -- forcing increases suddenly stop in 2000 -- that is used to bound the error on projections. The real answer is going to be somewhere between Scenaro A and C, and Hansen used Scenario B to highly the midpoint between the two. The actual data are so close to Scenario B that decent first guesses can be made about the forcing in the next century or so, and more sophisticated mathematics lets you improve those guesses quite a bit.
Now what about the experimental data? These are averages of a great many measurements of many different kinds obtained from a variety of devices from around the planet owned by many independent groups of scientists and governments. These data are publicly available and well-cited in the literature on the subject. If you want, you are perfectly free to process the raw data yourself and see if it matches the values shown on the graph alongside Hansen's very rough scenarios for future effective forcing behaviour. The processing is a little involved, of course, because you are doing many different unit conversions, each with their own uncertainties that must be and are accounted for.
To falsify all this data, we require nothing less than complete control of every first world government on this planet, as well as every scientist under their jurisdiction. There are a handful of scientists that dispute global warming, but having looked into these scientists I would say that they do not understand climate nearly as well as they would have you believe. The disputes that do exist are in the second or third decimal point, so to speak. The consequences are highly unclear precisely because humanity has a lot of say in those consequences. If civilization collapsed right now, we would experience Hansen's Scenario C. If civilization slowly adapts to one that pollutes much less, the effects of the last century's pollution will still shape the climate for millenia to come. No one is sure what will happen, but many negative effects can be and are predicted: the destruction of the Netherlands and Indonesia over the next several centuries is virtually certain, though estimates differ on when it will happen . That goes, by the way, also for a lot of the Bay Area, Manhattan, Washington DC, and Miami.
In response to these claims, contrarians quibble about minor basic objections that have already been settled by other experts who have given copious counter-evidence to each of the usual contrarian objections. I certainly haven't heard any new ones in this discussion thread. I repeat my position: the only way to deny global warming is to deny the existence of a great deal of evidence. Global warming denial can only be an opinion born of ignorance.

Dear Sir, I don't believe a word. Even Hansen (and many others like Trenberth in one of the climate gate mails) cannot explain why his "measured" effective forcings do not translate into a warmer planet since 15 years. I can understand that he is tempted to do cherry picking and "adjustments" of data (just to show his projections were right), as he did with declaring the year 2012 the hottest in the history of the United States.

Among IPCC-affiliated scientists there is a big confusion going on between empirical observations and computer models. Some of them do not seem to be able to distinguish between the two (nor do the media). In fact this is a kind of paradigm change in science.

The planet HAS warmed in the last fifteen years, which is the entire point of this economist article. You continue to ignore evidence and lose the respect of any clear-thinking reader of your comments.

Not all hot days are caused by global warming. Global warming causes more hot days than there would be otherwise. That's why scientists talk about averages, rather than specific data points.

You can't possibly have ever been a scientist if you are so incapable of following what is really a fairly simple proposition: there are more hot days now throughout the entire world than there were a hundred years ago. Yes, there were hot days a hundred years ago... just not as many. It shocks me to think that you might honestly believe that your references constitute evidence against global warming.

It also shocks me that a person claiming to have once been a professional scientist is willing to argue based entirely on newspaper clippings. Shame on you.

With your attitude (so widespread within the global warming community) believing in and hiding behind assumed “scientific authority” mistaken for sacrosanct and by teaching banalities, science never can advance.

Water-related disaster in the world in the same period. From 160 - 380 floods.

Drought, flood, mass movement and storm. Total 275 – 900.

Wind turbines suck up water, extract methane.

Do not interfere with the wind. It is not a green energy used in this way, it is a destructive one and a killer.

In promoting wind turbines you may be destroying life all life quicker than greenhouse gasses.

Wind turbines effect. According to the research, the warming surface temperate increased from 2003 to 2011, which is consistent with an increase in the number of wind turbines in the Texas area used for this study.

Because this warming could impact crop yields of local farmers or have an even larger effect on the increase in global temperatures, the study authors say more research is needed.

“We need to better understand the system with observations and better describe and model the complex processes involved to predict how wind farms may affect future weather and climate,” Zhou said in a statement.
Nosboh Trebla

I am totally fascinated by the non-sense voiced here. Peer-reviewed data, Models that predict, Scientists believe. Are you serious? What data? Models are right? Those are the same guys that ran the financial industry models! Scientists are not greedy for money, power and influence? Imagine you are a meteorologist who can either predict the weather or get a 5 Million Dollar grant to study 'climate change' and publish news paper articles, with his/her picture in it, making people afraid of the doomsday. Which one will you pick?
Look at the map folks! The hottest days were recorded as far back as 1905! Clearly contradicts the warming hypothesis. I am a physicist. Can you not see that climate change science is garbage. The conclusion of their research is forgone because the title of their top journal is "Nature Climate Change". Want to try publishing a study that says climate is barely changing? Good luck!

1) The "same guys" that perform climate modelling did NOT "run the financial industry models". They are completely distinct sets of people. That kind of blanket slander is not useful and should really stop.

2) The best way for a scientist to gain money, power, and influence is to stop doing science and go into public policy advocacy, like the so-called global warming skeptics. If you are going to start attacking the funding sources of people who hold opinions on climate science, please do it even-handedly.

3) You are not acting as a physicist should by referring to hot days in 1905. The existence of outlier data points in the past has no bearing on a discussion of the global mean temperature per year, which is undeniably highest in the last fifteen years. I'm a physicist too, and I'm calling you out on this. Your argument is a discredit to your profession.

Typical socialist, getting personal because it is hard to argue. I am not attacking physicists, I am attacking bad scientists doing bad science.

1) Yes, the same guys, maybe not the exact same person, but the same type of person, someone caring more about (bad) theoretical models than actual data. Neglecting to see that reality does not follow the Gaussian model is just as bad as neglecting to see that temperatures do not in fact follow a hockey stick curve. It is even worse when the person knows it but publishes it anyway because that is where the political (read research grant) money comes from.

2) My point. That's why climate scientists write in news paper columns and go on TV and to the UN to advocate their cause, and extract tax payers money for their 'research'.

3) This is just a personal insult. I would fight for your freedom o express your opinion freely, even this one, but I reject your claim. Yes, if all record temperatures ever recorded are at the minimum 50 years ago, then this gives strong doubt to the recent warming hypothesis. I never said it proves its wrong, I said it contradicts it. I could use the same argument you make here, to, much more correctly, discount recent events (e.g. hurricains) as being outliers having nothing to do with any perceived global warming. How would you react to that?

Mark my words, here is what will happen:

Temperatures may rise mildly over the next 50 years. Arctic shipping routes will open, resources will become available to be mined from there. Due to the slightly warmer weather, people will burn less coal to heat their homes. The sea levels will not rise, there will be no doomsday. At some stage people will begin to see that the climate has always fluctuated, with or without human influence and that there is no reason to be alarmed about small changes of the order of +/5 degree C and that in fact it would be colder weather that would be much much much more reason for concern. If I was afraid of the weather, I would be afraid of cold weather! Mark my words and call me on it anytime.

I'm a libertarian. There are those blanket slanders happening again. There are no "types" of people, there are just people. I'm an individual you have never met, and you are making assumptions about me that seem to be based entirely on your interactions with people who are not me. I think you are arguing in a similarly muddled way when you claim that the "same type of people" are responsible for both climate change science and engineering of financial derivatives. It's complete nonsense.

As for those newspaper columns, check the bylines again. It is rare to find a climate story being written by a climate scientist. There are some notable exceptions like Jim Hansen, but you need to weigh this against the fact that every credible scientist that studies this problem professionally notes that the current climate of the Earth is unprecedented in human history, that our major population centers are almost universally found on coastlines or rivers, and that simple conservation of energy and of mass implies that an ice-free arctic is coming in a few decades and that this will cause a rise in sea levels, which is already being observed. No one is sure of the long-term effects, but there is little doubt that these changes will create millions of refugees from countries such as Indonesia and the Netherlands that are highly susceptible to the effects of climate change. Scientists, being largely good citizens, duly sound the alarm bells. People like you respond by attacking them on, as far as I can tell, no factual or even rational basis -- and I have made many attempts over many years to find a single shred of credible evidence that global warming is the hoax you claim. It seems more to me like you, and others who argue similarly, are afraid and are in the denial phase of dealing with the reality we face. I don't know, of course, but I have yet to see a factually supported argument come from you or any other contrarian.

As for a change of 5 degrees, well, smaller changes than that were responsible for all the previous mass extinction events on earth. It may have escaped your attention that we are currently living through another mass extinction event, almost certainly triggered by the agricultural revolution, that may be even worse than the one that destroyed the dinosaurs. In fact, there are plenty of indications that it may rival the Permian-Triassic extinction event in which 95% of the species on this planet were wiped out. We do not live in "normal times" with regards to planetary ecology even without the burning of fossil fuels, and the principle behind greenhouse gas feedback loop is intelligible to any physicist that is willing to spend a while reading realclimate.org and the IPCC reports (which I have done -- it converted me from my previous position on global warming, which was pretty much the one you are expounding).

The problem is not so much the change in temperature, it is the rate of change of temperature over time. If climate change happens faster than a species' ability to adapt, that species dies. If the temperature jumps five degrees in the next couple of centuries, we have a real possibility of what Jim Hansen calls the "Venus syndrome": runaway global warming that boils off all the world's oceans and thereby destroys life on this planet. I think that's unlikely, but it's worth at least considering possible mitigation scenarios to protect human life. The alarm being sounded is not a false one, and we as a species really need to move past the denial phase and decide what if anything we should do about it.

As for not being afraid of hot weather, well, that's a position only a person in a cold climate can take. Talk to a farmer in the midwestern United States and ask them about the heatwave of summer 2012. More like it are coming. There is a real possibility of a huge spike in US food prices like the one that triggered Egypt's revolution. The economic consequences of global warming are already happening.

I want to say one final thing. I have no idea what should be done from a public policy standpoint, and I have no training on this point. That doesn't mean that I feel free to deny the existence of global warming. My suspicion, however, is that most contrarians are reacting not to the scientific arguments, but to the public policy arguments. It is imperative that these two issues be decoupled if we as a species are to handle this crisis effectively. We must come to understand that the scientific consensus is well-founded, but that no one has any clear idea of what policy changes should be enacted. Let's move away from repeating arguments that were settled twenty years ago.

What happens when ice floating on water melts? Does the water level rise or not? Answer: It does not! It will stay exactly the same. Look it up if you have to! What would have to happen for the sea levels to rise is that the antarctice melts, because it is on land, not floating like arctic pack ice. Since the sea levels have not risen a bit in recent times, there is obviously no immediate danger.

And apply logic. If our actions really do directly heat up the climate, then surely it is reverisble quite quickly if it really has to. The argument that it is not reversible makes no sense. If it is not reversible, even with reducing Co2 emmission, then how could we cause it in the first place.

And how much is it even warming? 0.5 degrees in the last 100 years! That's nothing. What is everyone talking about?

Like a religion. Show the man a 100,000 year old homo sapiens skull, and he will still not believe that we are older than 5,000 years.

What is everyone talking about?

Your worries are hence totally overblown! Always remember, you are paying too. Because of this climate change non-sense, other things do not get accomplished. If you are a libertarian, you should know that whereever government gets involved, it created a mess. Just in the last issue this news paper reported that the EU now burns 50% more coal than last year, the exact opposite of what the burocrats wanted. Unintended consequences. No planning ever works out the way it is intended. The bad thing with government planning is that it involved forcing people to follow it, on pain of losing your freedom and property. As a libertarian you should see that this alone is wrong! No human being should be forced to do things against their will. No human being should be forced to work in slavery for the desires of others (which is what taxation of income is).

If the climate really warms, and there really is action needed, trust me, the private sector will find ways to deal with it, not the government. They cannot even send a motorcade through Colombia without stopping at the brothel. FBI agents send naked pictures of themselves around. Our president thinks "Austrian" is a language. How could you possibly believe that people like this, and the people they fund, could have any clue how to do something useful about anything?

What we should do is to limit their power so they can only mess up a little bit.

If we continue the way we do, we will be bankrupt and living in caves before any climate can heat up.

It's not just sea ice that's melting. Ice on land melts too, so Archimedes' principle does not apply. Ask any climate scientist and they will give you the same answer to that elementary and incorrect objection.
As for the reversibility of climate change, you are betraying an ignorance of the second law of thermodynamics. It takes many hundreds of thousands of years to convert airborne carbon to fossil fuels: plants respirate, die, decompose, are buried beneath new layers of sediment and slowly become petroleum. The reversibility happens on a longer timescale than the rate of carbon pumping that is happening now.
As I said before, half a degree in a century is enormous. You continue to betray a complete lack of understanding of climate science. I maintain that no contrarian has given me a factually supported argument.
Edit: reading back over your reply, I'm not even convinced you read my previous response past the first paragraph or so. You're continuing to confuse a climate policy debate with a climate science one. Please separate the issues, or I'm not going to bother trying to discuss this with you. I'll leave you to your paranoid fantasies.

If the sea levels are NOT rising, which they are NOT, how can land ice melt? It does not! I am not going to ask a climate scientist. They are biased. The political wind is very strongly blowing in only one direction and you will not get government research funding (in many country now the only that is available) if you voice a scientifically correct, not a doomsday opinion.

How hard would it be, if we wanted, to plant lots of trees that would soak up the CO2 very quickly?

How can you call me paranoid? You are the one who thinks we will all drown or bake or both. I am the one who says 'take it easy'. Unbelievable. Totally religious! Without any sense of reason.

20 years ago we worried correctly about the deforestation of the rain forest. Now we worry about carbon footprints and such non-sense while the forst is cut down and no one gives a damn about that. All thanks to your god, Al Gore, and folks who follow him like lemmings. Just unbelievable!

For the last time, sea levels ARE rising because the oceans ARE warming causing BOTH sea ice AND land ice to melt. I believe this because I actually looked at all the evidence with a critical eye -- namely, averages of sea level data from around the planet for the last several decades. All this can be found on realclimate.org and many scientific papers. As for planting trees, this isn't economically feasible because we are currently chopping down natural forest for wood and agricultural land. Even if we were to plant enough trees, it would take and will take millennia for the carbon balance to return. This is a long term problem.

You're clearly not paying any attention to anything I'm saying, however, so this reply is for anyone else who cares about verifiable facts that is free from any political discourse whatsoever.

I cannot let this stand! In the interest of the public.
The sources photo-punk cites are run by people which are paid by the government. All of them, from NASA to Penn-State to the Norwegian Weather Institute. The author of the specific article photo-punk cites is an author of the UN IPCC report, the very people who profit from the climate change religion by extracting tax payer money for their salaries and research grants.

1) Look at the axis on the left, the unit is: cm/year. And the numbers go from -0.1 to 0.1. That's 1 mm per year at the most! Most of the time the changes are smaller than than, half a millimeter per year, that's 3 pieces of thin paper pressed together, or less.

2) And it fluctuates, up a bit, down a bit.

3) Even at the most extreme rate, it would take 10 years for sea levels to rise 1 cm, less than half an inch. 100 years for a rise of 10 cm, 4 inches.

4) Compare and contrast this to natural tides, present in all seas. How much do tides rise an fall? Much much more than that, 2 or 3 feet, in 1 hour! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide
If tides don't cause a problem, how can a (alleged) very very very mild rise over a very very long time, cause any alarm now?

5) Note that the apparent sea level rise in 1880 (yes 1880) is about the same as it is in 2000. As late as 1980, well after the industrial revolution (as many will hopefully know), sea levels were falling!

6) That's the worst the alarmists/agitators predict!

7) The chances that an asteroid will hit the earth and destroy us all are probably higher than this climate change hoax. And, it would be far more devastating. I say scrap worrying about climate change, and start preparing for orbital defenses against potential asteroid and comet strikes. This, as many will know, has actually happened before, and, will at some time happen again.

And another point, a detail which helps me see that you are trying to pull rabbits out your hat:
You say that it will take millenia for CO2 levels to return to whatever levels they were at the start.
How do you know that? What is your evidence? How can you predict this so confidently? Are humans not inventing technology all the time to solve problems? Why is not possible to plant more trees if needed? So why do you say that? Is it not only for the reason of causing alarm and agitation?

If you were willing to read scientific literature and generally act as a scientist, Lubos Motl, you would have found this confirmed repeatedly by several independent forms of analysis by several independent scientists. I'm going to stick with a famous recent example of a climate skeptic that was converted by performing an independent statistical analysis of climate records.

As for inventing technology to alleviate the problem, I'd really rather not leave the fate of humankind up to such vague promises. I'd rather find some way to ensure that polluters pay the true cost of pollution. As it stands, I and my descendants have to pay for the mistakes of my ancestors and I think that's unfair.

You realize that there's more than one graph on that site, right? All the answers to your questions can be found on that site. I'm not doing your research for you. I already gave you a link that you can use to answer all of your questions and much more. I'm not going to translate each and every page for you.
Be a scientist, for crying out loud. Stop being a pundit.
Edit: As I have no evidence that your research style consists of more than copy+pasting a URL and going on a diatribe about the first thing you see without attempting to check if the source itself answers your extremely basic questions, I suggest going here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/ and clicking on every link you find. If you continue to think that global warming is not supported by copious scientific data, then you can try emailing the owners of that site who are professional climate scientists dedicated to answering people like you.

3 questions:
1) Compared to what? The climate warms compared to what? Compared to when? Why is now the ideal climate? Why not a little warmer, or colder? Why do we all presume that the climate now is ideal?
2) At what cost? At what cost do you want to stop it? Nothing is free! Everything costs money!
3) What hard evidence do you have? The map shows temperature records going back 100 years. How much is the climate really warming? What adverse effects have we observed that we can with high probability pin to and climate change?

Every religion prays on human fear. It needs doomsday scenarios, a hell, and similar things. Socialism has presumably run out of the United States being the evil satan, given that the Soviet Union crumbled and North Korea is now known to be one giant concentration camp, while Americans are generally still relatively free and happy. So then what doomsday scenario could the socialists invent in order to justify big government controlling the people and fleecing them of their earnings. A warming globe, rising tides, we will all die! Advocated by a lawyer who lost the presidency. What else? Guns kill people! Sure, cars do too, golf balls do, knifes and baseball bats do as well. How was the holocaust in Rwanda committed? Machetes! Nazi-Holocaust? Gas! What else? Global finance! Oh yes, those greedy capitalists. Socialists are far less greedy and regulators do not lust for power! And politicians, never, they have our best interest in mind!
Do you not see the folly of all this?

You know, all those questions you so eagerly ask just show how little you know of the phenomenon you oppose. Get to some serious reading and learn the answers to your questions or just admit it that you oppose or just admit what we already know - that you are against global warming hypotheses cause the only solution you can imagine is increased government involvement.

I'm afraid the left (at risk of offending some well-meaning folks) is lacking the creativity (or the sack?) to push a better solution than "gov't involvement" on the flip-side of that argument. (I'm not talking *everyone*, just the statistically representative American voter, which is more or less 'everyone' for the purposes of my rant).

If you really care about AGW, put your ballot and your petitions in the garbage with your TV and your Prius (that you probably commute 100+ mi/day in, emitting more carbon than my 10 mpg '81 F-150), and get a bike or a train/bus ticket. Stop vacationing by plane just because everyone's doing it, and stay home and plant a garden (hint: more relaxing). Last I checked the average AGW-fearing folks emit about the same amount of CO2 annually as the average AGW-hating folks. If *you* are unwilling to make changes to your lifestyle, guess how many changes your gov't is going to be willing to force on you? Not like 'we' haven't been trying this route for going on 30 years now...change comes from within, lol.

Very good point. Gore jets around in a private plane after all and it is the socialist which opposed a windfarm of Marthas Winyard (10 miles out) because they did not want their precious view obstructed. You make an excellent point. All the folks ringing the alarm bells. But run their apple computers all the time while drinking their starbucks latte's (skinny but with whipped cream) and drive around hundreds of miles a day in their volvos to send their kids to soccer practice. I ride a bike by the way, but not because of 'global warming'.

I agree. The only solutions being put forward are excuses for expansion of the powers of government without any real plan for dealing with the problem. I don't see this so much as a leftist viewpoint but a political one -- most politicians are beholden to oil interests at some level, so they fight any potential action on the problem. The problem cannot be solved with politics, since the real game of politics is to obtain more power over the rest of us.

I think a lot of what this comes down to is whether or not we as human beings are willing to take a chance that anthropogenic climate change is real and that we must do something about it, or not. Should we err on the side of caution and begin voluntarily reducing our emissions, or should we roll the dice and hope that climate changes have little or nothing to do with us? This is the question in my mind. As for where I stand, I would rather begin reducing emissions and cleaning up the planet. If I'm wrong, then all we did was create a cleaner world. But if I'm right, then we may be making the future better for everyone.

You paint an incomplete picture:
1) What do you mean with voluntary? Climate stuff is big government business! Nothing the government does is voluntary for the people forced to follow the laws!
2) What evidence, if any, do you have that a) the climate is changing, b) that it is adverse, c) that it is caused by us, d) that we can do something about it
3) Why are you so sure that reducing emission will do anything to either positively or negatively affect the climate?
4) Doing anything carries a cost! Nothing is free? Do we have many problems in the world? HIV? Malaria? Poverty? Incomplete mobile network coverage? Computers still cost too much and are too slow! Air travel is too inconvenient still? Space travel is not possible? There are no good robots that can clean your house and cook food? Cancer? Are these not all problems that we have a lot more evidence for, and that we know we can actually do something about?

The end argument is that I don't think anyone can argue that less pollution in the environment is a negative. Even if global warming is entirely imaginary, I would love to find the person who would agree that adding massive amounts of car exhaust (etc) is beneficial to the environment we all live in.

This chart is complete garbage. The Africa Kebili is 100% wrong, being more than 10C overestimated and not taken with a Stevenson shelter, the Tirats Tsvi reading is a scam, since the thermograph was broken and the observer also misread the temperature, The Rivadavia temperature is also fake, taken with a unsheltered temperature, so the ridiucolus Death valley 134F recorded in a normal day without any heat wave at all, being 15-16F overestimated. What a pity those "doctors" of WMO and NOAA don't have a minimal knowledgment of the basics of climatology.
Moreover MoenJo daro reading has been surpassed in 2012 by Sulaibya in Kuwait which recorded 53.6C , the new Asian record

Climate change is big government business and if you want your research funded, you cannot say that this is largely bogus. The top journal in the field is called "Nature Climate Change". Guess what your chances are to publish a paper there which says that the climate will only change by 1 degree C in the next 100 years? I give you a hint, the percentage is smaller than 1%!

Where is caution in all of this? The skeptics would have us continue as normal until such a time as we can prove causality with absolute certainty. When there is risk that the dam 'might' break, you DON'T load it with more water. Lead, mercury, asbestos, tobacco - how many lives were ruined due to past delays?

As for warmer being better - as someone pointed out, Australia wished it was otherwise. Look at the Sahara and central US, projections have those deserts growing. Here in Canada, we are losing our forests to an insect that is no longer held in check by cold winters. Winter has many benefits that too many people are incapable of understanding.

My biggest fear is that the scientists are understating the problem to avoid being labelled radicals. I look at the changes to my local weather in the past 25 years and am stunned by the magnitude.

Lead, mercury, asbestos, tobacco - how many lives were ruined due to past delays? You are one of those people who believe that it was government action that improved safety? One of those people who saw the curve that showed how safety went up after this and that law, without ever bothering to look what went on before the law was introduced, which is exactly what happened after, safety went up. How many people are killed by wars instigated by governments? How many people are killed because the tax money that is taken from people, is used to 'fight climate change' instead of inventing drugs and better cars? How many people dies because the FDA delays good drugs coming to market? How many people die because the government believes that cocaine is bad for you, and hence wages a 'war on drugs'? How many years does every one of us lose in working for the state (forcibly) in order to finance all this folly of saving this and saving that? You paint a narrow picture without looking at the general problem! Fear is the best weapon of the propagandist and agitator!

Science and Religion are distinct types of knowledge (there are other types like Art, Literature, Mathematics, Political ideology) and each belongs to a distinct sphere. Nevertheless when the thermometer says something people should forget their beliefs and look. The world is having many more instances of extreme weather, with a small but relentless continuous increase, as predicted by all scientific models. Climate changes by natural and human factors.

Concerning climate the book "A song of ice and fire" created a world with chaotic seasons, peopled by some strange beasts made of ice and other beasts made of fire, a world ruled by Magic. This world is not Earth, here the climate is amenable to scientific analysys. People who don't believe in climate science (or in any type of science) should try moving to Westeros but I am afraid that is not possible.

Best regards from an anormally warm Rio de Janeiro, where the climate was much milder two centuries ago, when our city had 50 thousand not the present 5 million inhabitants.

My goodness! They are relentless! Look: The top journal in the climate change field is called "Nature Climate Change". If the hypothesis of your research is in the title of your top journal, then this does not shine a good light on your research. What if someone wants to publish a study that shows the climate is not changing? Can they get it into "Nature Climate Change"?
3 Questions:
1) Is the weather getting warmer? Answer: Still hard to tell, climate is volatile. Even the data we have show that perceived temperature increases have been very modest, maybe 0.5 degree C over the last 50 years.
2) Is a possibly warmer climate caused by human activity? Answer: The famous/infamous fact that temperatures rise first, CO2 emission follow, is 'inconveniently' opposed to the human activity theory.
3) Is a warmer climate good or bad? Answer: Why would anyone presume that the weather as it is right now is idea? Warmer climate opens arctic shipping routes and resources. It makes available more arable land. Sea levels have not risen. Every person I know prefers warm weather to cold and wet weather!
And no, unlike Al Gore, I am not an over-ambitious lawyer who did not get the job he wanted. I hold a PhD in physics and now work in a tech company. In my scientific opinion, much of 'climate change research' is questionable and there are clear indications that at least some researchers in the field are biased.
As the map shows, most heat records recorded were set between 1905 and 1950. The climate is naturally volatile!

And I got a PhD in biochemistry from and Ivy League university, and I work for a tech company, and in my scientific opinion there is absolutely no doubt that human activity has led to global warning. The chemistry of carbon dioxide induced global warming has been known since the 1800's...it is not something "liberals" dreamed up. And the trends in warming correlate well to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Your point # 2 is asinine and has me questioning where you "earned" your PhD.

Physics beats biochemistry, especially on climate and weather stuff, would you not think so too, Charlie? Are you seriously suggesting you, who has learned about the chemistry of proteins and cells, can argue with me, who has actually studied weather phenomena, fluid dynamics and mechanics? You clearly think of yourself as being anointed, smarter than others. Your bias goes so far, that not only do you presume to be smarter than people without a PhD, you presume to be smarter than anyone who disagrees with you. Even someone trained in the very science, physics, that forms the foundation for climate science!

No it was recorded in 1960, and was over 50. The reason why people do not live in central OZ is because it is a desert far away from any coast. People also don't generally live in Saskatchewan, Canada, even though it is freezing cold. Your argument hence falls apart. Since 1870? Oh really? Well how did they collect that data? Other data states that child mortality in Cuba is lower than in the US, simply because a child that dies within a few hours after birth, is counted stillborn, while it is counted as a mortality in the US. Furthermore, who funds NASA? The government? Where did AL Gore work most of his life? The government? WHat is popular to say right now if you want your research funded by the government? That climate is getting warmer or that it is not?

I presume as reader of the economist you are aware that the day has only 24 hours and that resources are limited. 'Doing something' about 'climate change' carries a cost and makes us all worse off than if we did nothing. Only if you have firm evidence that we are really heading into a costly catastrophe that is directly linked to climate change, should you do something. You are not asking your surgeon to cut your head open every time you have a head ache, or do you?

As to your theory that the government is deliberately misleading us all and made the scientists lie to us seems a tad far-fetched. That would have to be a massive conspiracy of tens of governments gagging tens of thousands of scientists. And all that without so much as a whisper in evidence. Even the Flying Spaghetti Monster has more credibility.

Mercury rising because of Global warming or natural process ? I think this kind of fear phobia report appeared frequently in western media because of white man`s psyche based on fear.In 1905 ,1913 no one hue and cry for global warming why mercury raised in that years? I think your reporters must use some logical thinking before writing this fear phobia kind report,I wrote many time shallow reporting of your reporters but old habit never die

Socialists do not care about the facts! They simply want to force everyone under their ideology. If you don't agree they label you as stupid. If you don't agree and you are in North Korea or Cuba, they throw you in prison!